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The Free MMO Überlist (updated: Oct 11)

Posts

The link to Goonzu in the OP goes to the Japanese version - the version in English (I forget whether it's specifically NA or what) is at http://luminary.ijji.com/ and called Luminary: Rise of the Goonzu.

It focuses on the economy, trading, and player governance more than most games. Unfortunately, most of your time is still spent grinding mobs, which is about as exciting as Progress Quest but requires you to be around to click on new targets.

Rohan Online is a PVP-based MMORPG which is currently in closed beta but is actually open for anyone to sign up and play. There's going to be a player wipe on the 9th when it goes into open beta.

Graphics are alright and the grind isn't too bad because there are quests (kill X of enemies and/or retrieve Y of drops), and the classes are balanced enough so that all are useful. The game also encourages limited PKing for exp and partying as well because each member gets extra exp in a party.

Lunia was a bizarre experience. From what I can tell, it was more like a four-player co-op game where the slots are completely open and basically anyone can just drop right in and play as one of the three characters that you didn't choose. In the middle of each mission, there's a scene where your party is sitting around a campfire at night and you can decide to either continue with that same crew or slip off into the void and find another. I think the group that I was in re-entered the first mission several times in order to level up and farm the end boss a little bit, so you can definitely go that route if you'd like to grind a little in preparation.

Saw your entry on 2moons and thought you might like to know a bit more about it. It's based off Dekaron, a Korean MMO. Perry was asked to head the team to port it over to English, so it's not really developed by him. It's supposed to be a "mature MMORPG for adults" having high levels of violence and profanity. It does have severing of limbs and such, but the words "mature" and "adult" seem to attract middle school-aged kids like moths to a flame. The profanity is a bit ridiculous and is out of place in some instances, and this comes from someone who normally cusses like a rum-drunk sailor.

Gameplay-wise, it's okay. A definite grindfest. Once you get to higher levels it can get pretty intense and the attack animations/spell effects look really cool. Fun for a while, but it really does get old pretty quick, IMO.

Saw your entry on 2moons and thought you might like to know a bit more about it. It's based off Dekaron, a Korean MMO. Perry was asked to head the team to port it over to English, so it's not really developed by him. It's supposed to be a "mature MMORPG for adults" having high levels of violence and profanity. It does have severing of limbs and such, but the words "mature" and "adult" seem to attract middle school-aged kids like moths to a flame. The profanity is a bit ridiculous and is out of place in some instances, and this comes from someone who normally cusses like a rum-drunk sailor.

Gameplay-wise, it's okay. A definite grindfest. Once you get to higher levels it can get pretty intense and the attack animations/spell effects look really cool. Fun for a while, but it really does get old pretty quick, IMO.

Okay, thanks for the information. Now I'm really convinced I'm not going to play the game. XD

t Liquid Ghost: that's a pretty good description of the game. The little storyline is an interesting twist, but it doesn't really work because the story is stupid.

I got an invite for some sort of steampunk-ish MMO from Asia, but their site is horribly uninformative. It's called Neosteam. I could check it out, but it looks like just another retarded korean grind mmo.

Hmm, the game comes with Xtrap, the same anti-hacking software used in Knights Online and Sword of the New World. It's one of those software pieces that scan your whole PC, so it's a bit iffy. A quick google search doesn't turn up any lamentations, though. Well, okay, besides some cheaters who complain their game doesn't work.

Now, I dunno about you guys, but they've got the art style down. If only there was a way to turn the bloom down and the viewing distance up. Anyway, great art direction in my humble opinion:

Gameplay itself: mouse only, controls are not up to par with modern titles, but maybe things will get better over time. This is a rather early build, I believe. I'm level 9 now and I've got 2 special attacks that do a shitton of damage and auto-attack that is a bit slower. I haven't been able to get myself killed on mobs of around my level, although some lev 15 monsters I ran into at lev 6 almost got me. Nothing out of the ordinary there. (stupid Koreans grrrr) Plays like all the other MMOs, with the caveat that it goes a lot faster now, you'll rip through your enemies at lower levels. Which makes the grinding okay, I guess.

Grind: Eh, not more than say ... WoW, which is to say that it could be better.

Awesomeness: there's a gigantic turtle walking around a field, if you talk to it it swallows you (not depicted) and you get to fight *inside* the beast. Also: when you interact with an NPC/metro the game turns into a sort of cinematic mode wherein there's no UI besides the menus you open with hotkeys. Looks pretty decent.

Engrish: Horrible, simply horrible. Half the game isn't even translated, some NPCs start off in Engrish and half way through it starts talking Korean. Spelling and grammar obviously aren't a main concern for the developers.

Conclusion: Pretty cool for at least a few hours. I'll play some more soon. If you are an explorer like me you should really give this try, it has some unique environments and it's fairly save to travel around.

*edit: I'm going to put it down under promising titles, the game is still fully under development.

I'll agree with Aldo on all of those, except that in my case the game will lock up my computer randomly, requiring a hard reset. Letting it sit there for a while will result in a "your graphics card got caught in an infinite loop!" error in the Windows logging system post-reboot.
Wish I could find a way to fix that, as far as generic Korean grinds go I was rather enjoying this one (the intro animation is great fun, if obviously WoW inspired in the second half, and I like the music whenever it hits).

I'll agree with Aldo on all of those, except that in my case the game will lock up my computer randomly, requiring a hard reset. Letting it sit there for a while will result in a "your graphics card got caught in an infinite loop!" error in the Windows logging system post-reboot.
Wish I could find a way to fix that, as far as generic Korean grinds go I was rather enjoying this one (the intro animation is great fun, if obviously WoW inspired in the second half, and I like the music whenever it hits).

Hm, the official forums are a joke and I don't know of any resources, so I can't help you out there.

I'm looking forward to the third neutral faction, they look pretty interesting.

Laonar: I'll take some more screenies when I play again later today. I'll see if I can find one of those heavy armed turtle pets as well, they're amusing.

Nevermind, I'm in now. I had to restart my router to get a new ip address. By the way which kingdom are you guys on? My current character is in Elerd (the second one) but I'm going to reroll a new one.

After playing some more I got really bored with it. Mostly the fact that mobs of around your levels die without a sweat, but if you go only one level higher than what you are "allowed" to attack you all of a sudden to a lot less damage. It also works the other way around: when a low lev mob attacks you they do 0 damage and you one-shot them.

Really boring in the longer run. Still, it's a better game than half the game on that list. =/

I like the fact that your health regenerates at a sensible manner, at least at lower levels. I hate how a lot of Korean MMOs lately seem to think that player friendly means having loads of health... but crappy regen, forcing you to either sit around or chug potions non-stop.

I like the fact that your health regenerates at a sensible manner, at least at lower levels. I hate how a lot of Korean MMOs lately seem to think that player friendly means having loads of health... but crappy regen, forcing you to either sit around or chug potions non-stop.

Yea, they got that part right.

Still, the game is kinda painful to play, mostly because of the shitty pathfinding.

Haha, yes. I loved it when my character got stuck in an awkward corner, then I spent 10 seconds clicking everywhere until I finally hit a direction where my hitbox didn't collide with an obstacle right away.
Still, I do kinda dig the graphics despite being low poly and low texture resolution, and I really dig the quest flags that tell you where your objective is. Also, getting eaten by a whale and suddenly finding yourself inside it was awesome.

Lots of neat ideas, it's just a shame that in the end it's still a Korean game. How come they toss out so many free&mall MMOs, but over here the free ones seem to be more like 1980's experiments in masochism than casual friendly?

I was wondering about that myself, gamengame in particular is coming out with a shitload of games.

Hypothesis: they release a lot of games that all work on the same server structure: they hope there will be a game for everyone between that big pile and that people will purchase some things from the cash shop then. This is assuming that the licenses to these games are dirt cheap. It's like those budget bins at the local games shop: most games are shit, but as long as you purchase one title they're going to make a few cents profit. As long as everyone does that they're happy.

It's weird shit, though. Mostly because a lot of these games look and play alike. :|